Alas, imaginary creatures are going extict almost as quickly as real ones.

An ever popular alternative to fantastic animal monsters has been to
define a certain class of people as being really some sort of frightening
supernatural beast, as in the caricature of
Jews
as horned demon-men, or that of Africans as sub-human monkey-people.

Witchcraft
accusations are a useful prototype to follow, and provide much of the
terminology used to describe the sociology and psychology of this sort of
thing. That’s why the term “Witchhunt” is
used to describe the righteous quest to rid the world of satanic ritual
child abusers, a monster that keeps popping up all throughout
history
in
various
guises.

Sadly, it seems like for every one of these wacky creeps who turns out to
be no more real than the Devil, there is a real life
s.o.b. whose bizarre
style of cruelty is so out-there as to make any statement about the
existence (or even prevalence) of a particular brand of antisocial kink
initially quite plausible.